“Arrest her, and take her to the Bureau at once.”
The men advanced to obey their chief’s command, but ere they could lay a finger upon her she had staggered backward, and had fallen fainting upon the floor.
They stooped to raise her, but a look of horror overspread their countenances as one of them removed his hand from the back of her head and found blood upon it.
Tseklinski bent, gazed into her face, placed his hand upon her heart, and listened intently.
“Dead!” he exclaimed, in a tone of awe.
I rushed forward to ascertain the truth. In a moment it flashed upon me. The pin she had worn in her hair had, by the force of the fall, been driven into her scalp, and the deadly Obeah poison upon the point had caused almost instant death.
It was a strange vagary of Fate. The harmless-looking weapon with which she had originally intended to assassinate the newly-appointed Chief of Police had caused her own death. Yet even that was preferable to the punishment that awaited her had she lived.
For a brief moment only I glanced upon the blanched, handsome features, then hurried from the house. Before midnight I had left Moscow, and was on my way back to London.